In early January 2018, Boeing announced it’s developing a concept for a hypersonic reconnaissance and strike drone that could compete with Lockheed’s own SR-72. Both Boeing’s “Valkyrie II”concept and Lockheed’s “Son of Blackbird” could be capable of cruising at speeds exceeding Mach 5, potentially allowing them to evade all... Read more

Boeing is working on developing a new Block III version of its F/A-18E/F Super Hornet to complement the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Unlike previous iterations of the Advanced Super Hornet—which Boeing was positioning to compete head-to-head with the stealthy single engine F-35—this version is a more modest... Read more

Forty-five seconds of swirling dust was all it took to kill two U.S. Marines and injure 20 other service members. On May 17, 2015, a Marine Corps V-22 Osprey tiltrotor — a $70-million hybrid aircraft that takes off like a helicopter but cruises like an airplane thanks to its... Read more

The U.S. Air Force’s fleet of more than 200 veteran F-15C/D Eagle air superiority fighters could gain a new, vitally important role in its old age. Twenty-six years after McDonnel Douglas — now part of Boeing — delivered the last single-seat F-15C to the Air Force, the flying branch... Read more

The U.S. Air Force is expected to award a contract for its secretive Long Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B) program later this month. The LRS-B award could determine the fate of the U.S. defense-aerospace industry as Northrop Grumman and a combined Boeing/Lockheed Martin team vie to secure a program that could... Read more

Boeing’s Phantom Works has scored a $6.6-million contract to continue working on a hypersonic drone aircraft as part of a program overseen by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon’s fringe-science wing. The XS-1 — short for “Experimental Spaceplane One” — is meant to test out a new... Read more